axxez wrote:Btw, how many bars of airpressure do you have on your tires? On mine there's a sticker 3.25 bar rear, 2.3 bar front which seems way to less to me... I am usually driving at 3.5 and 2.5, right now 4.0 and 3.0 as I got a lot of load.

I have change the tires right after I bought the car and the guy at the tire shop put 4.0 in for the rear and 4.5 in for the front which is what I have kept so far.

As for interior pics & videos: I'll probably do a little walkthrough when I find the time

Please give us more info...Where, how did it happen?Was it a straight swop? Clever solution... How long is temporary?How long where you immobilized?Have you solved the problem with the stabilisator bolts?Com on, don't let us humble travelers in the west, (with not enough guts) waiting... All the luck

I don't have Internet here all the time, so just in short:Happened in Mongolia, probably because of too much twist on the front axle. There must have been a crack in the spring which later caused the breakdown. The Kia Bongo spring is straight forward, only minimal (1cm) difference in the center bore.Now we changed to differnt leafs, as those Bongo springs wouldn't have lasted long. 4 leafs now in the front.. Car is much higher front than rear now and is quiet bumpy but will last. Front shocks are now welded Rancho RS5000 offroad rear shocks with the upper part from the old transit shocks

About the stabilizer bolts: due to the holes in the mounting and human logic it is possible to but the stabilizer in two different ways: to the front or to the rear bolts of the engine-mount. I don't remember how it was originally, but I changed it to the front and it seems to work much better. Also the 4 leafs of front springs are not allowing a lot of axle-wrap anymore, what is good for stability. Anyway, the suspension is a lot too hard and bumpy. I will need to change the springs in the front again when I am back. Also the bump-stops are too far away from the frame, which could cause a breakdown again. Though this should not happen, as the springs can take a serious lot of load now. The welded Rancho shocks are performing quiet good so far on the front, much better than stock.

Here are some pics.

Directly after the change, really bad to drive:

Springs starting to get little more soft to drive and hanging more down:

Back home savely (since a while now), after around 27.000km of mostly bad roads. Wasted 3 pairs of shocks, 1 pair of brand new front springs (repaired them a few times: broke twice got welded twice, changed for weak Kia Bongo springs, changed for strong russian 4-leaf springs), starter motor, 1 set of wheel-bearings (after the first 4000km), around 16l of oil and 2700l diesel. Now will fix shocks and springs and some minor things like oil, check bearings etc. as soon as I got some time.

Guess the big 4x4 would have cought up if they wheren't parked in front of the capital's 5-star hotels

First minor long-time-traveling problem temporary solved:Somehow the engine lost oil, which is not getting on my major-problems-list as long as it is just protectively coating the under-floor and is not dripping on the road. Somehow I just took a look randomly and found out that all the valve cover screws where all moveable by hand - not soo good. Fixed that one but also cracked the sealing a little, so let's see how long it will work out. Am going to put a new sealing when I do the big service. I am curious what else is worked loose... XD

Just lately worked on the van and it will be on the road again soon. As we removed the bushings from the KIA leaf-springs and left just the rubber, over time the frame worked itself into the spring. That's why the metal around the screw-hole is conical deformed and therefore the new original leaf-spring wouldn't fit anymore. How to solve that? Well, after some thoughts some parts of a spring compressor and some solid metal plates did the job as you can see. Afterwards the springs fitted kind of nicely.. If anyone would ask: Those 2-leaf springs are created by a leaf-spring factory, I ordered an original Ford Transit spring which should be supported by another leaf (200 €-bucks each). That's what came out. I will see how the whole geometry will work out now, I hope better! Only problem I see is the bumper, which I might modify. I lifted the stop bumper of the leafs a bit, as the offset proofed to let the tires touch the wheel arches and destroy the tread pattern in extreme situation. That's why I wanted the bump stop to prevent this problem.

- Changed the front springs, the shocks (modified MAN 7,5to shocks) viewtopic.php?f=4&t=182214- Did the undercoating for this winter- Let the valve cover seal and the front wheel bearings get fixed

Today I added some solar-panels to the system. They nearly fit my boxes on the roof, except for maybe 1cm. I didn't want them to overlap in front, as trees that are in my way could destroy the panels. So as a result, the panels would overlap on the rear. There for I mounted a rail and also created a protector made from a square cut aluminium, because I found the solar-panel electrics a bit delicate. Trees coming from the front shouldn't be a problem now, but I don't know if for driving in reverse I created more problems... In the end of the day, I also mounted stopper ropes inside the transport boxes, something that's absence annoyed me for quiet a while..

The Solar-System:1x 130Wp2x 35Wp1x MPPT unit--> parallel setup, with 4x Y-adapters and as a result of the adapting 2 quiet non-conform cables: (+)red female/female and (-) black male/maleI am a bit excited about tomorrow. Then I will see if I connected the panels correctly and if they do their job better than before. Problems that I see are slightly different Voltages of the panels (+/- 1V maybe) and different power output as well as lots of shadows on the big panel for most of the time.